A bag thumps the cold hard floor of a dark room. The smell of metal and cold air can be smelled through the room. A man standing over the bag with an exhausted expression. He has been working far to hard. His facial hair overgrown and misshapen in areas. The cold atmosphere only seeming to only multiply his stressed look, he walks over to a small covered area and yanks the cloth off of a protruding bulbous ‘thing’. Underneath the cloth is a machine that contrasted heavily with the surrounding. A TDVR capsule sits there. The TDVR capsule he has been working on fixing is right in front of him about to be finished. Soon he can have a hobby aside from just working on the damn thing. Which, usually only adds to his stress due to his hope and anticipation for the thing instead of the joy for working on it.

Invented 20 years earlier the new piece of technology decimated any other VR gear competitors. The True-Dive-Virtual-Reality, TDVR for short. The shiny capsule in front of him was a limited edition year 15 capsule he got from his brother who knew he was too busy working to even have a birthday day off. He didn't mind his job though. Taking off his work jacket, he went back to his bag to take out the last missing part of the machine he had yet to fix. A key to his favorite game: The Violet Star. A sci-fi vrmmorpg. Taking out the key and putting it into a slot at the top of the machine, he got into the machine primed for launch at anytime. As excited as any kid on christmas he pressed the on button. And the machine humed to life.

The capsule finding itself already manned closed the doors, beginning initial diagnostics. Scanning and adjusting so that the user would be comfortable. Finding everything comfortable and to his liking, the man awaited the secondary launch where he would be effectively injected into the game. Very Soon the words he wanted appeared before him, like lantern in the dark, it drew him in. the sequence starting the countdown the moment he touched the button.

3...2...1…

The machine screamed at response and a crack was heard near the side of it denying any access into the virtual world he so loved. Once again he work so very hard yet even now, with everything in place it was simply about to fail. The man was simply heart broken. And he started to relive bad memories like the time when he was younger, his mum got ill. Even as young as he was, he worked at hard as he could to help pay for his mother's illness. His father? Never even existed to him. He was so close too. He was 1,000$ away from being able to pay for the procedure, then his mother died from the very illness he was trying to fix. The greedy people didn't want any money short…

A tear fell from his dry eyes. The warm stream from his cheek becoming cold by the seconds. Using the money he had, he used it to help his younger sibling, a brother, to become an excellent man. And so as young as he was he studied all things adult to better raise his brother to become what he couldn't. A big success. To him, if his brother at least was a success then that meant he was at least a success enough.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Drip...drip...drip…

His tears kept falling from his dry eyes, he hadn't been drinking as much as he should, too much work to be done alas…

Many More memories filled his eyes like the stars of the skies. All of them the times he tried very hard but failed. Each one represented by each of his tears. The old weary man didn't have the energy to even wipe his tears. This would be the 13nth time he tried to activate the capsule. He had been attempting to fix it for 3 years now. Even his unlucky number didn't help him. His 11nth tear hit the capsule headrest.

He closed his eyes remembering the 2 good years he had in The Violet Star. he had a group of friends there, also die hard fans of the game. He bet they would be long gone from the game. Going on with their own lives. But he hoped to see them at least. He missed his companions. Including the rudimentary ship ai. Or even the npc’s that he interacted. All of them he missed. There was one thing he missed the most out of the whole game though. He had a long crush on an npc, yuu. Not her actual name but one he made up for her. The cute npc was a high official of a civilization, he didn't really care who or what civilization. All he new was that he loved her personality and she was simply the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. He was sure that some one had probably even proposed to her by now, the developers were kind enough to add npc x player marriage. Not like it would be a very ‘satisfying’ marriage. Sexual content was almost entirely prohibited in the game…

The other big problem was that the npc’s had limited ai, even if the ai was simply incredible by any means so far, it was still noticeably ai and that left some people in distaste. Even though he would have little real contact it was something he still appreciated.

Still though his game crush was all going to be whisked away by some irritating machine malfunction he had triple check. Every. Single. Attempt.

As his 13th tear fell from his closed eyes he slammed his fist down on the machine angrily and hoping to relieve any stress he could. The tear carried the last of his will no more strength was left in him to cry. As the final tear with the last of his resistance and hope hit the capsule, something that defied all sense of science happened, his strike against the machine rattle the internal parts adjusting their posture. And once more the machine roared to life with a newfound vigour that no machine of its caliber ever had before. The machine activated sending him to the virtual world.

The tears he spilled however also affected the machine, they conducted the electricity just enough to send it to his brain cutting it off entirely from his body effectively ending his life. Then next time the man will awake, it will be a new experience even more foreign than experiencing vr for the first time, yet also an experience he will be familiar with. So much so, he was used to it all his life: he was waking up for the first time on his spaceship.